Selected Correspondence:
Letter 23 (75) Spinoza to Oldenburg.

[Spinoza expounds to Oldenburg his views on fate and necessity,
discriminates between miracles and ignorance,
takes the resurrection of
Christ as spiritual, and deprecates
attributing to the sacred writers Western modes of
speech.]

Distinguished Sir, -At last I see, what it was that you begged me
not to publish. However, as it forms the chief
foundation of everything in the treatise which I intended to bring out,
I should like briefly to explain here, in what
sense I assert that a fatal necessity presides over all things and actions.
God I in no wise subject to fate: I conceive
that all things follow with inevitable necessity from the nature of
God,
in the same way as everyone conceives that it
follows from God's nature that
God understands Himself. This latter
consequence all admit to follow necessarily from
the divine nature, yet no one conceives that
God is under the compulsion
of any fate, but that He understands
Himself quite freely, though necessarily.

Further, this inevitable necessity in things does away neither with divine
nor human laws. The principles of morality,
whether they receive from God
Himself the form of laws or institutions, or
whether they do not, are still
divine and salutary; whether we receive the good, which comes
from virtue
and the divine love, as from
God in the
capacity of a judge, or as from the necessity of the divine nature, it will
in either case be equally desirable; on the
other hand, the evils following wicked actions and passions are not less to
be feared because they are necessary
consequences. Lastly, in our actions, whether they be necessary or
contingent, we are led by hope and fear.

Men are only without excuse before God, because they are in God's power,
as clay is in the hands of the potter,
who from the same lump makes vessels, some to honour, some to dishonour. [N1]
If you will reflect a little on this,
you will, I doubt not, easily be able to reply to any objections which may
be urged against my opinion, as many of
my friends have already done.

I have taken miracles
and ignorance as equivalent terms, because those,
who endeavour to establish
God's existence
and the truth of religion by means of miracles, seek to prove
the obscure by what is more obscure and
completely unknown, thus introducing a new sort of argument, the reduction,
not to the impossible, as the phrase is,
but to ignorance. But, if I mistake not, I have sufficiently explained my
opinion on miracles
in the Theologico-Political
treatise. I will only add here, that if you will reflect on the facts; that
Christ
did not appear to the council, nor to
Pilate, nor to any unbeliever, but only to the faithful,; also that
God
has neither right hand nor left, but is by His
essence
not in a particular spot, but everywhere; that matter is
everywhere the same; that
God does not manifest
himself in the imaginary space supposed to be outside the world;
and lastly, that the frame of the human body is
kept within due limits solely by the weight of the air; you will
readily see that this apparition of
Christ is not unlike
that wherewith God
appeared to Abraham, when the latter saw men
whom he invited to dine with him. But, you will
say, all the Apostles thoroughly believed, that
Christ rose from
the dead and really ascended to heaven: I do not
deny it. Abraham, too, believed that God had dined with him, and
all the Israelites believed that God descended,
surrounded
with fire, from heaven to Mount Sinai, and there spoke directly with
them; whereas, these apparitions or revelations,
and many others like them, were adapted to the understanding and opinions
of those men, to whom God wished
thereby to reveal His will. I therefore conclude, that the
resurrection of
Christ
from the dead was in reality spiritual,
and that to the faithful alone, according to their understanding, it was
revealed that Christ
was endowed with
eternity,
and had risen from the dead (using dead in the sense in which
Christ said,
"let the dead bury their dead " [N2]),
giving by His life and death a matchless example of holiness. Moreover,
He to this extent raises his disciples from
the dead, in so far as they follow the example of His own life and death.
It would not be difficult to explain the whole
Gospel doctrine on this hypothesis. Nay, 1 Cor. ch. 15. cannot be explained
on any other, nor can Paul's arguments
be understood: if we follow the common interpretation, they appear weak and
can easily be refuted: not to mention
the fact, that Christians interpret spiritually all those doctrines which
the Jews accepted literally. I join with you in
acknowledging human weakness. But on the other hand, I venture to ask you
whether we "human pigmies" possess
sufficient knowledge of nature to be able to lay down the limits of its
force and power, or to say that a given thing
surpasses that power? No one could go so far without arrogance.
We may, therefore, without presumption explain
miracles
as far as possible by natural causes. When we cannot explain them,
nor even prove their impossibility, we
may well suspend our judgment about them, and establish religion, as
I have said, solely by the wisdom of its
doctrines. You think that the texts in John's Gospel and in Hebrews are
inconsistent with what I advance, because
you measure oriental phrases by the standards of European speech; though
John wrote his gospel in Greek, he
wrote it as a Hebrew. However this may be, do you believe, when Scripture
says that God manifested Himself in a
cloud, or that He dwelt in the tabernacle or the temple, that
God actually
assumed the nature of a cloud, a
tabernacle, or a temple? Yet the utmost that
Christ says of Himself is, that
He is the Temple
of God,
[N3] because, as I said before, God had specially manifested
Himself in Christ.
John, wishing to express the
same truth more forcibly, said that "the Word was made flesh."
But I have said enough on the subject.
[Note N1]: Romans 9:21.
[Note N2]: Matt. 8:22; Luke 9:60.
[Note N3]: John 2:19. Cf. Matt. 26:60; Mark 14:58.